Robert Sietsema at Coppelia; Lauren Shockey at The Brooklyn Star

May 11, 2011

This week in the Voice, Robert Sietsema finds that “the food runs from inspired to terrible” at Coppelia; Lauren Shockey drinks the Kool-Aid at the Brooklyn Star.

Sam Sifton awards the National Bar and Dining Rooms one star: “[The décor] is appetizing, as it happens: it is the sort of restaurant where it is nice to be. And the food, which hews close to [Geoffrey] Zakarian’s new-American aesthetic, is to match. It is simple but not really, a menu of standards put through the reinvention machine, followed by wise and often wonderful desserts from Marisa Croce, the restaurant’s pastry chef.”
[NY Times]

Adam Platt more or less approves of Imperial No. Nine, where Mrs. Platt could “eat everything on this menu twice”; not so much with Niko, which he deems “another trendy new Soho restaurant with unexpectedly good cooking and a slightly feng shui-challenged atmosphere.”
[NY Magazine]

Meanwhile, Jay Cheshes is less forgiving of Imperial No. Nine, where he says, “So many of the composed dishes here seem to be thrown by one jarring off-note.”
[TONY]

Ryan Sutton praises, for the most part, Compose for its “tasty complications. … Translation: Compose is a great place for creative grub and booze. Most of the time, anyway.”
[Bloomberg]

Tables for Two rather enjoys Lyon Bouchon Moderne: “As for moderne, that is left to the chef, Chris Leahy, an apostle of Daniel Boulud and Laurent Tourondel. It is nice to discover that he sends out food as inviting as the atmosphere.”
[New Yorker]

Gael Greene finds a lot to love at Stuzzicheria: “[P]epperoncini-hot bucatini all’Amatriciana with pig jaw is better than any we had in Rome. The chef is a gnocchi adept.”
[Insatiable Critic]